'To find the Easter egg in a movie you often have to wade through the credits, which lengthen in proportion to the CGI special effects and lavish locations...' Some Easter reflections and highlights.
...cognitive bias sustained public faith in the medical profession long before doctors had the tools to truly alter the course of an illness. These forces did not disappear the moment that working therapeutics arrived - meaning we remain enthralled by own salves
Seventeen per cent of UK households experienced food insecurity in 2023, with cases of rickets, scurvy, and malnutrition on the rise. Are we facing a revival of Dickensian-era diseases?
‘Wherefore’, meaning ‘For what reason’, is one of the most fundamental questions we must ask in medicine. Tasneem Khan applies this idea to trauma-informed care.
Is there 'One Big Thing' that GPs do? Or does it emerge out of all the things that GPs do?
Nurse Bernadette Millwood, in the final year of her career, is interviewed by her daughter Dr Sinead Millwood, a newly qualified GP in the first year of hers. What can we learn about primary healthcare going forward into the future?
Is general practice the platypus of medical specialities?
Medicine: Right Idea, wrong science? Should critical realism be the new science of medical practice?
Alistair Appleby introduces critical realism as a philosophical foundation for medical science and primary healthcare
Do the ARRS roles lead to GP clinics filled with increasing complexity, and what are the other contributory factors? Nada Khan looks at the evidence.
Alex Burrell reflects on the moral agonies of planning an early GP-career
For the record, plenty of elderly patients have excellent lifesaving care, are well looked after, and speak highly of the exemplary care and attention they had in hospital.
However, hospital isn’t always the best place for them. Let me explain why I believe
Myanmar should not be forgotten in the conversation around the ongoing failure to protect hospitals and health workers in conflict zones. Jim Brockbank reminds us.
“Do we have a deal?” A haunting tale from Ben Hoban
Pattern recognition by AI is already overtaking humans in many diagnostic fields such as radiology and cytology. Large language models are doing the same in communication, dialogue and processing human-generated text. Here we present their potential within primary care using four broad
Richard Armitage visits the wild frontier of LLM-powered commercial health apps and reflects on three examples: ElliQ, MMGuardian and WHOOP Coach
Throughout medical history, there has been a tension between systems that locate health within the patient and those that have it outside. Ben Hoban finds the determinants of health and illness by looking in and by looking out.
Nada Khan argues that it’s worth just reflecting back on what was on offer and why, whether this retention scheme was working, and what future plans NHS England may have to keep GPs in practice.
This issue’s life and times articles describe the failure of society and policymakers to value general practice. To value is to understand and appreciate both the beauty and appropriate uses of a thing. It also has a sense of quantitate weighing -
Drawing inspiration from Brazil, Cornelia Junghans, Matthew Harris, and Azeem Majeed suggest building a community infrastructure of trained and paid Community Health and Wellbeing Workers (CHWWs) who work with GPs, community services and local authority.
It’s worth examining the reasons in the health system for supporting special interests. Are we playing Jenga with the health system, continually removing building blocks to replace obvious deficiencies in a rickety structure? Or are we enhancing the generalist, patient-centred care that
Richard Armitage predicts how AI can transform clinician-patient consultation.
Employing lower skilled healthcarers at the ‘diagnostic front door’ of general practice will not save money, resources, professional time or efficiently – it produces the opposite. David Zigmond invites debate.
Even as a GP trainee in the mid-90s, I genuinely don’t recall learning about the concept or practice of clinical reasoning. It’s not as if we weren’t guided on data synthesis or critical thinking, or the importance of these aspects of the
Hannah Milton reflects on domestic abuse statistics in relation to men and women
At the most recent WONCA global conference in October 2023, the WONCA Women’s Working Party on Women and Family Medicine (WWPWFM) met with young doctors movements from all world regions, to discuss common themes and possible ways to work together. Amanda Howe
We know (from that research) that higher continuity is associated with lower mortality rates, reduced healthcare costs, higher patient satisfaction, safer prescribing and reduced hospitalisations. But what about patient safety incidents? Nada Khan investigates
Considering a dual role as a GP-academic? Daniel Baumgardt has some reflections to share!
Over 4 million people watched the first episode of Mr Bates against the Post Office when it screened on New Year’s Day. And suddenly things started to happen. David Misselbrook reflects on what this might mean for British medicine...
The Lancet declares that “generative AI is not an author”, and dictates that “these tools should only be used to improve language and readability”. But are these statements – the first a factual claim, the second a normative assertion – entirely true?
In a world of immediacy and impermanence, my two cards and lonely box of chocolates earn a particular significance. They emphasise the humanity that is still possible in General Practice despite the need to count, measure, and capture everything – a connection
The introduction of new roles working alongside GPs should improve access, quality and contain costs in health care, but these new roles cannot fill the skill gaps left by the shortage of GPs. Terry Kemple looks at the evidence.
As 2024 dawns, on behalf of BJGP Life, I would like to thank all of our contributors, both regular and occasional. You have challenged, informed and supported us. To those thinking, 'Could I write a Life article?' please come in and have
"The extra mile is a problematic concept. If everyone goes the extra mile, do we lose sight of which miles are extra? If we are to embark on our quest then the readings in this month’s Life and Times help us to
"After a storm, the sand shifts. Amazing volumes appear and disappear from areas of the beach. Dunes are sliced away, leaving sand-cliffs. Others newly appear. Rock and the keel-spines of old wrecks are exposed that I never knew lay there at all.
...while the risk of bear attacks or frostbite is substantially lower than in the popular namesake television series, GP trainees face a range of similar challenges as their TV counterparts – isolation, uncertainty, a steep learning curve, and genuine fear.
General Practice has been diluted by demand and lost all flavour. Young doctors have no taste for it and, with the NHS in free-fall, we need to now undertake some fundamental changes. John Havard and colleagues offer a gin and tonic themed
I left a job today. It was a good job with good people, which is always hard. It’s so much easier to leave when the interpersonal environment is toxic. It’s difficult when colleagues are deeply collegiate, but the structure is exploitative.
Crispin Fisher is a full time GP partner in Herefordshire. He lists what partnership entails. Readers are welcome to add, challenge or embellish his ideas in the comments.
The ARRS is a big step change for how practice teams work to manage their patients and appointments, and it’s naïve to think that implementation of such a wide-ranging scheme wouldn’t have significant impacts and unanticipated consequences for the wider workforce.
Richard Armitage investigates Medwise.ai, an 'AI tool' that claims to empower practitioners with informed decision-making, adherence to guidelines, quick access to answers, and a reduction in burden on GPs for supervision. But are these claims anywhere near the reality?
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to download the latest updates in your sleep and go to work knowing that you were fully NHS-compliant, and without having to dodge any of those awkward questions about Segawa Syndrome? It certainly feels as